I was hugely honoured yesterday to be one of two women awarded the Emma Humphreys individual prize, which this year was focused on “women who have challenged male violence against women through their writing.” The amazing Gabriella Gillsepie also won, and I’m thrilled to be joint winner with such an inspiring woman.
I think yesterday was one of those days I’m never going to forget: I felt humbled and really quite overwhelmed by it all by the time I finally staggered into bed last night. Highlights of the day for me were sharing the stage with the other shortlisted candidates, and the fantastic reception we received from the crowd at the Feminism in London Conference where the awards ceremony took place.
But do you know what also really got to me? Logging onto Twitter and Facebook this morning and seeing all the lovely supportive messages from people. In fact there was a point earlier today when I was going through my notifications and thanking everyone (my apologies if there’s anyone I missed) when I wanted to tweet “ok, you can stop all this niceness now, this is Twitter don’t forget and that’s not how we do things on here!”
Because it’s not really is it, not anymore. For a lot of people social media isn’t about being nice, or being supportive, or showing solidarity with a group or a cause; it’s about snarking, and policing people’s language, pulling someone up for the slightest ideological misdemeanour, or putting them down for some other, usually minor, infraction.
But whatever, that’s an issue for another post on another day: certainly not one for today. Because today people are being nice to me on social media, and I’m going to try and enjoy it while it lasts.